Gyudon: A Quick and Easy Japanese Beef Rice Bowl
Simmered with Onions in a Sweet/Savory Sauce
My friend is the child of Japanese immigrants, thus she grew up eating a lot of traditional Japanese cuisine. From time to time, she’ll talk about some of the meals her mother made, and I want to eat almost all of them. Take, for example, her sukiyaki. Her mom had the local butcher slice the beef so it was razor-thin, and simmered it in a delicate sauce my friend cannot replicate, try as she might. Her mom died some years ago, and, alas, her recipes went with her.
I would imagine most of us have at least one or two memorable dishes from our childhood that we wish we could have again. Now, after listening to my friend talk about her mom’s cooking, it’s food from her childhood I want. Like that sukiyaki.
My interest is a response to how special and tasty she makes the food sound, combined with ongoing Netflix mini-binges of the Japanese TV series “Midnight Diner.” If you don’t know it, it’s about a Tokyo diner that’s open from midnight to seven am. The man who runs it will make any dish his customers want as long as he has the ingredients. In those hours of suspended time, customers’ thoughts often turn to the food of their childhood, and they ask him to make a particular dish from their past. Each episode focuses on a different customer…
